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Eleventh Circuit Rejects Roy Moore's Libel Suit Over "Banned from … Mall … for Soliciting Sex from Young Girls" / "One He Approached Was 14" Ad

Eugene Volokh | 4.24.2026 2:03 PM

From the long opinion in Moore v. Cecil, decided today by Judge Elizabeth Branch, joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Frank Hull:

In 2017, Roy Moore ran as the Republican nominee in a special election to fill an open seat for one of Alabama's United States senators. In the final weeks before the election, multiple news outlets reported that several women had accused Moore of inappropriate sexual conduct with them when they were young. Senate Majority PAC ("SMP") grabbed onto the news reports and ran a campaign ad that stated, among other things, in separate individual frames that (1) "'Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall … for soliciting sex from young girls,'" and (2) "[o]ne he approached 'was 14 and working as Santa's helper.'" [An underlying news report had "asserted that Moore approached Miller and told her she was pretty when she was 14 years old and working as Santa's helper and that Moore asked Miller out on dates two years late," so the argument appears to be that he had never approached a 14-year-old for sex. -EV] SMP ran the ad hundreds of times, and Moore eventually lost the election.

Moore sued SMP for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy under Alabama law, arguing in relevant part that the two statements above when read together created the false defamatory implication that he had solicited the 14-year-old girl working as Santa's helper for sex…. The jury found SMP liable for defamation and false-light invasion of privacy, and it awarded Moore $8.2 million in compensatory damages….

SMP appealed, and the Court of Appeals held in its favor:

Moore's case … involves an allegation of defamation-by-implication (or as Moore puts it, the statement that resulted from the juxtaposition of frames 2 and 3 of SMP's ad), not express defamation. {Moore's theory was that the statement in frame 2 that he "was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall … for soliciting sex from young girls," when combined with the statement from frame 3 that "[o]ne he approached 'was 14 and working as Santa's helper,'" falsely created "a new statement" that he solicited sex from Wendy Miller when she was 14 years old and working as Santa's helper.}

Defamation-by-implication is fraught with subtle complexities and is more nuanced than express defamation. "'Defamation by implication' occurs when a defendant juxtaposes a series of facts to imply a defamatory connection between them." Thus, "a defamation by implication stems not from what is literally stated but from what is implied."

Because the defamatory meaning is implied as opposed to explicitly stated, it necessarily follows that the challenged statement could have multiple meanings—some defamatory and some not. Accordingly, because the challenged statement in a defamation-by-implication case has multiple meanings, the question that necessarily follows is whether showing known falsity or reckless disregard of the falsity of the implied defamatory statement is enough to show the necessary intent to defame for purposes of the actual malice standard.

Although we have not addressed this question, several of our sister circuits have, and they have concluded that, in a defamation-by-implication case, showing that the defendant knew that........

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